Monday, September 30, 2013

The TorchBearer's Book Club: Bumped chapters 19-23

Posted by
K

We’ll be breezing through the next five chapters, mostly because there’s not much to say about them that wasn’t
already discussed, and also because the next one will be such a clusterf*ck of
OMFG WHAT THE S*** AM I READING that I’ll need to devote all my time and
attention to it.

Also, the next three chapters are
mostly worldbuilding worldbuilding worldbuilding and set up, and since we’ve
already discussed these at length, the only thing left is to snark like it’s
2006 and Twilight has just hit the stands.

Spoilers and racy language warning!

Jondoe continues to be his
charming chatty self and Harmony is still trying to pick her jaw off the floor.
She’s all “Oh, my grace!” and Jondoe seems to find that hilarious. Which I
imagine it would be. We’ve already seen samples of what the everyday language
is for non-Goodside girls: “I’m terminating!” and “Breedy!” and, of course, “I’m about to pop and outtie,”
(which sounds disgusting, btw.) Just think how much racier / ridiculous it can
get in the heat of the moment. “Yeah, sperminate me!” and “I’m just going to
close my eyes and think about the paycheque, mmmkay?” will be the tip of the
iceberg.

But “Oh, my grace?” I guess on-one
found God in his presence.

He also seems to have a wide
cultural knowledge, recognising a pop star from almost 20 years ago, who is
also the mother of the members of a current major rapper band.

Well. Not a pop star.

He calls her a “major bonermaker”
(p. 121) and then proceeds to say that Harmony is much hotter than her. (Of
course she is.)

Putting aside the implication that
“Fed Double X”, the rap act which will come up a few times during the book, are
celebrity children and thus liable for Miley Cyrus-esque meltdowns in the very
near future, I would very much like to know if there’s a female equivalent to “bonermaker”
and if so, what that would be. “Panty-wetter?” “Panty-shaker?” “Edward Cullen?”
(yeah, prolly not that last one)

Sadly, like girlbot, I imagine
that bonermaker is a term purely used by the male population, because, pfft,
women, they don’t enjoy sex, they need to have their eye on a whole different
goal!

Or so this society would like us
to think.

Jondoe also sprouts off more
things he learnt in Melody’s file, which just shows how reliant everyone is on
technology here. Harmony has been staying with Melody all weekend, but she
doesn’t seem to know any of the things Jondoe has learnt by merely going
online. I wonder if McCafferty meant this as just another touch in the world
she created, or as a clever criticism of what we have here right now – with people
told to use the social media in order to network and amp up their chances of
employment, but also to be careful what they say because their employers and
insurers might go on their Facebook and see embarrassing pictures from Cancun.
Or because your date might cancel on you because they went on Google and saw
something they didn’t like.

That’s not to say that getting to
know a person online doesn’t have its advantages – as seen previously, Jondoe
used the information to take note of Melody’s preferences and do everything in
his power to put her at ease. Likewise, in the real world, you might not want
to date someone who has expressed, loudly and repeatedly, his disgust with
something you hold dear.

Oh, and apparently professional
surrogating is also called “reproductive empowerment” in this world. I’ll get
to that next week.

We move onto Melody’s chapter,
which, if these chapters were titled, would have been something along the lines
of “Neener-neener, I’m so much better than all of you.”

First she snarks about the
cheerclones who tried to synchro-bump at the MasSEX party mentioned in the
first chapters, and how they just couldn’t wait to see if they succeeded.

It
turned out the Cheerclones were far less successful than the Science Olympians,
who had the necessary left-side brainskills to accurately calculate ovulation.

McCafferty, Megan, “Bumped”, page 124, Harper
Collins, Kindle Edition

Stay classy, Mel. Have I also
mentioned how much “ewww, female sexuality and sex” is there in these chapters?
First Harmony’s outrage at the getup of that former pop star (“dressed in a tight red top and a
blasphemously short skirt. She’s on her knees, but she’s definitely not praying”
p. 121), then Melody being dismissive of both the Cheerclones (for being so
dumb) and the Science Olympians (who could only find one guy in their group who
was attractive enough to do the job) and then slagging off the girls in her gym
class for being too sick (morning- and sympathy-wise) to do anything with her.
Granted, she slags off the boys too, because they’re so hung-over, but from all
the evidence, Melody is more squeaked out by sex than Jessica Darling (who, at
least, wanted to get laid, even if talking about it made her edgy.)

I’m willing to chalk some of it up
on blowback – Harmony’s having some serious cultural shock and Melody is so
over-exposed to the hyper-sex culture that she is rebelling in the only way she
knows how – but I’m still annoyed at Melody for having so little sympathy for
her fellow girls. Even if she’s profoundly in denial, she has enough awareness
to know that what happened to Malia was wrong, so why can’t she extend some of
her sympathy to the other girls in her school? God knows, she doesn’t have all
that many reasons to feel superior to them.

No, really. Melody isn’t
interested in looks (no more than worrying if she fits, anyway), she’s not the most
athletic (the Cheerclones being able to flip well into their third trimesters
beats super-soccer skills in my book) nor is she the most dedicated, seeing
that she spends two whole periods (North American Arts and Culture and
Biogenetics II, the latter of which is super-important for her future)
exchanging notes with Zen about Harmony.

And Zen… oh, Zen, I like your sunny
disposition, but you seriously piss me off in this chapter.

I
think your sister’s marriage is a mistake.

I
think you’re a victim of your own false consciousness.

(…)

We
should offer your sister asylum so that she can stay in Otherside. Forcing marriage
is a violation of her basic human rights.

What
makes you think she wants to stay?

I’ve
done my research. Most trubies don’t get five miles away fromt their settlement
before they get scared, go back and make a lifelong commitment to the Church.
That she came here all proves that she wants to stay.

What
if I don’t want her to stay?

If
you choose to be so uncool as to cast out your identical twin sister, she can
always stay with me. (…) This is a serious situation, Mel. You have an
opportunity to do something here. To help. This time don’t wait until it’s too
late.

First of all, bringing Malia into
this, even without mentioning her name, is a low blow if I ever saw one. Melody
is having it hard enough without you forcing her to project onto Harmony, and
if she chooses not to do anything, that is her call, not yours.

Second, though you are one-hundred
percent correct in the case of the book, Harmony has not given any outright
indication that you are. All your assumptions so far are based on some research
you did on the Net, on which you drew your own biased conclusions. If anything,
Harmony’s actions (and most of her thoughts) indicate that she’s only come so
that she can convert Melody, not to stay herself.

So why are you going all macho
male saviour on her? Are you trying to score brownie points in Heaven? Or are
you hoping to get into Melody’s pants?

Finally, why do you infer Melody
doesn’t seem to care for her sister, just because she’s not butting in like you
are? Melody does notice Harmony doesn’t talk about her wedding plans and her fiancé
much, but she chooses to give her sister space and not push her boundaries with
thoughtless questions. For all of Melody’s faults, she is, at the very least,
conscious of how delicate a person’s inner balance is, and she is careful of
not upsetting it if the other person does not wish it to be upset.

Zen, even if you think something
is wrong by your standards, you cannot view women as helpless pets that need
your expert guidance. Your own culture is hardly lollipops and sunshine – even
if forced marriage is not a thing, those masSEX parties you chauffeur people to
are openly condoned and acknowledged. The Elders of Otherside may not directly
violate teen’s basic human rights, but they do everything but. (And sometimes
they also forget the BUT.)

Moving on before I pop an outtie, Harmony manages to unstick
her vocal cords enough to sing for Jondoe (soccer and hugs, apparently, didn’t
work, so he finally brings music into the conversation.) Also, apparently most
teens play guitarbot instead of a regular old guitar, which I think is a huge
shame. Like most people with artistic interests, I bristle whenever someone
equates a job in the arts as “being paid to do your hobby”, like painting or
playing or writing for money isn’t a real job. That’s not to say playing a mechanised
instrument doesn’t have its drawbacks, but the way it’s worded here, it implies
that no effort is put at all.

And
as I do, I feel a tiny flame sparkling deep inside me, the flicker of a single
lit match in a place I’m not supposed to think about, and as I keep singing and
strumming that light burns hotter and brighter and spreads its light up and out
and throughout my entire body, and I sing and sing and sing until that tiny torch
has lit my entire body ablaze, an undousable conflagration of passion.

Melody’s next chapter is basically
her making up with Shoko (kinda) and again, nothing much to say except, if she’s
so sympathetic of Malia, why doesn’t she feel sympathetic to the rest of the
girls in the school?

And then we jump back to Harmony
to see Jondoe gaping at Harmony. For a second there, we worry that he’s cottoned
on that there’s something fishy, but then he just shrugs and gets Harmony an
ovulation test. At first glance, it seems like a ridiculous chapter to set
apart, but then we get the rest of the book and it all makes sense.

Anyway, stay in tune for next week’s
political propaganda. It’s going to be interesting.